How Much Water Is Needed to Make Your Food ?

Further to the previous posting on PREVIOUS WATER .... here's another update on how much water is required to produce a daily intake of food, especially meat and its related products... ... ...
Conserve and save our precious WATER by eating wise and healthy.... Be vegan and help save the Planet!

Posted By: Greennii on March 29, 2011 @ care2.com

World Water Day was March 22 and since then I’ve been seeing water statistics everywhere. I knew that one pound of beef took a lot of water to produce, but I didn’t know the exact figure and my wildest guess was 500 gallons. Could it possibly take that much? If you grew up in a household anything like mine, we had gallon milk containers and my mom would reuse them in the house or garden for various projects. One was used for watering the houseplants and it seemed I could water several plants with one of those. So as I tried to imagine hundreds of those filled up waiting to water my mom’s plants, I came up with my magical 500 gallons. I was off. Way off. It takes 1,799 gallons [1] to produce a pound of beef. One pound! I have a hard time getting my head around that.

Some of the other products we consume take quite a bit of water, some surprised me in their water-conservancy, but none surprised me more than chocolate. On gallons to make a pound, here’s how the other foods fare:

Goat – 127
Sheep – 731
Pork – 576
Chicken – 468
Milk – 880
Wine – 1,008
Beer – 689
Coffee – 880
Tea – 128
Rice – 449
Potato – 119
Leather – 1,096 – For a Half Pound!
Apple – 18 – For one Apple
Egg – 53 – For one Egg
Chocolate – 3,170
Bread – 11


Now, I’m probably not going to stop drinking wine and coffee, or stop eating chocolate (do I get extra coffee and chocolate credit for not eating beef?), but I am likely to think about how my eating actions affect our planet and steps I can take to conserve more water. Just to be safe for the moment, I think I’ll go snack on some bread and tea.

Jocelyn Broyles

[1] All water consumption statistics from National Geographic’s “The Hidden Water We Use“, sourced form Waterfootprint.org.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/how-much-water.html#ixzz1LEyQcm7n